title: Visualizing and identifying single atoms using electron energy-loss spectroscopy with low accelerating voltage.
abstract: Visualizing atoms and discriminating between those of different elements is a goal in many analytical techniques. The use of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) in such single-atom analyses is hampered by an inherent difficulty related to the damage caused to specimens by incident electrons. Here, we demonstrate the successful EELS single-atom spectroscopy of various metallofullerene-doped single-wall nanotubes (known as peapods) without massive structural destruction. This is achieved by using an incident electron probe with a low accelerating voltage (60 kV). Single calcium atoms inside the peapods were unambiguously identified for the first time using EELS. Elemental analyses of lanthanum, cerium and erbium atoms were also demonstrated, which shows that single atoms with adjacent atomic numbers can be successfully discriminated with this technique.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba 305-8565, Japan. suenaga-kazu@aist.go.jp
authors.forename: Kazu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Suenaga
authors.forename: Yuta
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hiromichi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kataura
authors.forename: Toshiya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Okazaki
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kimoto
authors.forename: Hidetaka
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sawada
authors.forename: Takeo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sasaki
authors.forename: Kazuya
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Omoto
authors.forename: Takeshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tomita
authors.forename: Toshikatsu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kaneyama
authors.forename: Yukihito
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kondo
mesh_terms: D004560:Electricity; D037741:Fullerenes / Q000737:chemistry; D028581:Lanthanoid Series Elements / Q000737:chemistry; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D009942:Organometallic Compounds / Q000737:chemistry; D046590:Spectroscopy, Electron Energy-Loss / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D037741:Fullerenes; D028581:Lanthanoid Series Elements; D009942:Organometallic Compounds